Bearing Witness to the Anthropocene: A Contemplative Interbeing Framework for Planetary Health and Nursing Ethics

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author(s) present an insightful exploration of the relationship between and the importance of Zen and the questions of climate change, ecological sustainability, and humanistic practices.

Author Response

The authors appreciate the reviewer’s positive assessment of the work and their support for its publication.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article consists of two parts: the first presents the authors' personal experiences and the second is a systematic review. The first part is not suitable for scientific publication, while the second is valuable and could yield an interesting publication. The four research areas identified in the review could serve as a starting point for developing a valuable article (embodied practice, narrative meaning-making, interconnected ethics, and reflective integration). However, in such a case, the title, abstract and the entire article (analyses, discussion, conclusions, etc.) require changes. The authors' great merit is the presentation and analysis of identified scientific publications.

Author Response

Comment: The article consists of two parts: personal experiences and a systematic review. The first part is not suitable for scientific publication... the title, abstract and the entire article require changes.

Response: We have fundamentally restructured the manuscript to address this concern. The work is now explicitly framed as a contemplative autoethnographic narrative and a scoping review.

• The personal narrative is no longer presented as standalone "anecdotal evidence" but as a contemplative autoethnographic narrative that serves as an interpretive lens, grounding the scoping review findings in clinical and spiritual practice.
• The title and abstract have been rewritten to reflect this integrated methodological framework, emphasizing the synergy between first-person contemplative inquiry and third-person systematic evidence.
• The methodology and the discussion have been updated to reflect the change.
  
  I tried to make all the corrections while maintaining some alignment with what the guest editor requested, asking me to submit a paper on my experience that includes a series of Haiku. Because the request was unusual, I let them know I would be adding a scoping review, as I didn't think a personal narrative with Haiku would stand alone. I spent significant time putting 20 documents and all of my blogs into Atlas.ti and coding them. I do hope this addresses your concern while still addressing the original request I was given.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I want to begin by acknowledging the significance of your work. You undertake something important and courageous: you bring a deep personal spiritual practice into connection with systematic scientific evidence to illuminate a critical blind spot in planetary health research. The idea that contemplative traditions such as Soto Zen could offer ethical and practical resources for planetary crises is not only plausible but urgently worthy of discussion. Your concern to finally establish nuclear harm as a planetary health issue is absolutely justified. This fundamental motivation has my highest respect and support.

The central problem, however, lies in the methodological and epistemological implementation. You combine a 'personal narrative' with a 'scoping review', but it remains entirely unclear what this narrative is in a methodologically sense and how the integration with the review takes place. You write that the narrative serves as an 'interpretive lens', but what does this mean in an analytical perspective concretely? Is this an autoethnographic study? If so, there is no reference to autoethnographic methodology (Ellis, Chang, Adams et al.) and no presentation of the analytical process. How was the narrative created: through journaling, retrospective reflection, contemplative practice? How was it analyzed? These questions are not marginal but central to scientific assessability.

The claimed 'convergence' between personal narrative and scoping review is not demonstrated. What analytical steps led to this? How were similarities and differences systematically identified? According to what criteria? The four themes (embodied practice, narrative meaning-making, interconnected ethics, reflective integration) that appear in the Results section emerge from nowhere: it is entirely unclear whether these were developed inductively from the material or deductively applied. And also the role of the second author remains puzzling: if this is the personal perspective of Daiho Rōfū, what function did Kafle have in developing and analyzing the narrative? 

Your paper also connects different forms of knowledge: first-person knowledge (contemplative experience), third-person knowledge (systematic literature), professional knowledge (nursing), and spiritual knowledge (Soto Zen teachings). This integration is very promising and potentially fruitful, but it must be epistemologically justified clearly systematised. Why is it legitimate and epistemically productive to combine these? There is a rich literature available on 'contemplative inquiry' as a research method (Zajonc, Varela, Depraz), on first-person epistemology, on embodied knowledge, but unfortunately this is not drawn upon. Instead, the paper switches between I, Daiho Rōfū, and implicitly we without clarifying the speaking positions. The formulation 'awakened me to the inseparability' furthermore implies an enlightenment experience as epistemic standpoint, which without a critical reflexive discussion seems scientifically highly problematic. And on the same account, Moreover, personal experience is sometimes presented as the Soto Zen perspective, without creating space for plurality within this spiritual tradition or for one's own situatedness. One's own position is absolutised rather than framed as one among many possible perspectives within the Soto Zen tradition.

The paper in it's research perspektives attempts too much at once: Planetary Health + Nuclear Harm + Spirituality (general) + Soto Zen (specific) + Contemplative Medicine + Nursing + Personal Narrative + Scoping Review. Each of these elements deserves careful elaboration, but in the present form much remains sketched without analytical depth. The scoping review appears in this constellation like a subsequent attempt to legitimate the solely autoethnographic perspective through 'hard' numbers. This is unfortunate, because a well-executed contemplative autoethnography with clear epistemological foundation would not need this. Or conversely: if the scoping review is central, then a much clearer methodological integration would be needed than merely 'identifying similarities'.

The Interbeing Planetary Health Framework (Figure 3) is conceptually interesting, but it is entirely opaque how it was developed. Is it a theoretical synthesis? An emergent finding from the review? A result of contemplative practice? All of these together? This lack of clarity runs through the entire paper: as a reader, I do not understand what you have done methodologically and how your conclusions have been developed. This does not concern individual aspects but the foundational conception, and makes the study scientifically unassessable.

To address these fundamental problems, the work would need an entirely new methodological framework that clarifies: What is the "personal narrative", data corpus, interpretive lens, case example? How was it created and analyzed? How were the four themes developed? How did integration with the scoping review occur? What epistemological foundation guides the combination of different forms of knowledge? It would require a decision for a focus: either an autoethnographic study with a Soto Zen perspective on nuclear harm (then the scoping review could be removed) or a scoping review with narrative illustration (then less personal narrative and more analytical integration would be needed). The current combination attempts too much and executes none of the elements cleanly.

Author Response

We are deeply grateful for the reviewer’s detailed critique. We have addressed each of the fundamental problems as follows:

1. Methodological Framework (Contemplative Autoethnography)

• Comment: It remains entirely unclear what this narrative is in a methodologically sense... no reference to autoethnographic methodology.
• Response: We have explicitly defined the study as a contemplative autoethnographic narrative and a scoping review (Section 2.1). We now cite foundational autoethnographic methodology (e.g., Ellis et al., 2011) and, specifically, Contemplative Inquiry (Zajonc, 2009). We have clarified that the data corpus for the narrative consists of twenty years of contemplative practice journals and retrospective reflections, analyzed through iterative thematic coding.

2. Integration and Convergence

• Comment: The claimed convergence is not demonstrated... What analytical steps led to this?
• Response: We have added a detailed description of the Integration Process (Section 2.4). Integration was undertaken using a structured thematic synthesis and narrative weaving rather than an informal assertion of similarity. This allowed us to identify the four convergent themes (Embodied Practice, Narrative Meaning-Making, Interconnected Ethics, and Reflective Integration) through a transparent, inductive-deductive process.
• Following a preliminary synthesis of the scoping review and the initial reflexive coding of the autoethnographic narrative, findings were organized around shared thematic domains. Within each domain, evidence from the scoping review was presented alongside illustrative and interpretive material. Elements not directly related to the area of study were coded during initial analysis but were not incorporated into the integrative synthesis. 

3. Epistemological Justification

• Comment: Why is it legitimate and epistemically productive to combine these [forms of knowledge]?
• Response: We have added an Epistemological Statement (Section 2.1) justifying the combination of first-person (contemplative autoethnography) and third-person (scoping review) knowledge. Drawing on  Zajonc’s contemplative inquiry, we argue that integrating these perspectives provides a more holistic understanding of planetary health than either could alone.

4. Speaking Position and Enlightenment Language

• Comment: The paper switches between I, Daiho Rōfū, and implicitly we... 'awakened me' implies an enlightenment experience as epistemic standpoint.
• Response: We have standardized the speaking positions: "We" is used for the methodological and review sections, while "I" is reserved for the contemplative autoethnographic narrative. We have removed or moderated absolutist and enlightenment language (e.g., changing "awakened me" to "clarified the realization") to ensure the narrative is framed as a situated, reflexive perspective rather than an objective spiritual truth.

5. Role of the Second Author

• Comment: The role of the second author remains puzzling.
• Response: We have clarified that the second author (Kafle) served as a critical friend and methodological auditor, providing an external check on the thematic analysis and ensuring the narrative remained grounded in the research questions rather than purely personal reflection.

6. Framework Development (Figure 3)

• Comment: It is entirely opaque how the Interbeing Planetary Health Framework was developed.
• Response: We have clarified that Figure 3 is a Conceptual Synthesis (Section 5.1) derived from the convergence of the scoping review findings and the contemplative autoethnographic analysis. It is presented as a theoretical contribution to the field, not a direct empirical finding. It will be an are for future research.

7. Technical and Editorial Polish

• Response: We have performed a comprehensive artifact sweep, correcting subject-verb agreement errors (e.g., "become salient"), removing redundant text blocks (specifically the duplicated Dōgen section), and ensuring the PRISMA 2020 flow diagram (Figure 2) is correctly placed and labeled. I have also submitted the tables and the figures to the journal for professional editing, though it isn't clear they will be back before I must resubmit the paper.

We did a large-scale rewrite of the paper to address your concerns. I know the narrative was out of the norm for a paper, but when I was asked to write a paper for this special edition, I was specifically asked for a personal narrative with interspersed Haiku. I told the guest editor I would be adding the scoping review because it felt unusual to me to do something so personal. I hope changing this to a contemplative autoethnographic narrative with the analysis and coding in Atlas.ti addresses any concerns. 

I took the paper out of track changes to resubmit it because it was so hard to read and instead highlighted the areas with significant changes.

I truly appreciate the time you put into this review. 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors The authors should choose a single topic. Currently, there are too many topics: the Anthropocene, planetary health, nuclear and environmental damage in the context of spirituality, Soto Zen, and nursing, grounded in an autoethnographic personal narrative and a scientific review. Furthermore, there is a lack of coherence between the findings of the autoethnographic personal narrative and the scientific review. Table 3 is very valuable, presenting scientific findings on the connections between various spiritual practices (including mindfulness) and aspects of health, but there is no analysis of this material in the context of the proposed article title. The discussion presented here is an analysis, but we do not know which articles it refers to (there are no references to the cited literature in Table 3). I suggest the authors focus on the analysis and results resulting from their review of research (Table 3) and refer to various contemplative or secular traditions (mindfulness), including Soto Zen. However, the text definitely needs to be shortened, and the argument should be logical, as it is very difficult to understand what the authors mean.

Author Response

We would like to express our sincere gratitude for the detailed and rigorous feedback provided. We have treated this revision as a fundamental restructuring. We have moved beyond the origins of the piece to produce a formal convergent study that maintains analytical distance, demonstrates a clear reflexive layer, and centers on a single, cohesive contribution to planetary health. We attempted to break down each element of you feedback to demonstrate the seriousness with which you took your feedback.

1. Choosing a Single Topic
   We have unified the "too many topics" into a single, cohesive argument: how contemplative practice (the "how") enables nursing (the "who") to address nuclear/environmental harm (the "what") within a planetary health context (the "where").
2. Coherence Between Narrative and Review
   We have achieved coherence by using the same four integrative themes (Embodied Practice, Narrative Meaning-Making, Interconnected Ethics, and Reflective Integration) to structure both the narrative findings and the scoping review results.

       3 & 4. Analysis of Table 3 and Explicit References
We have thoroughly revised the Discussion (Section 5). Every thematic claim now includes explicit references to the articles cited in Table 3 (e.g., "as seen in the ecospiritual models of Somarathne 2025 and Cayir 2022"). This allows the reader to see exactly how the literature supports the proposed framework.

5. Shortening and Logical Argument
   The manuscript has been significantly shortened and the logical flow tightened: Gap → Proposed Mechanism → Evidence (Review/Narrative) → Synthesis (Framework) → Implications.

We believe this revised manuscript represents a significant advancement in analytical rigor and thematic clarity. We thank the reviewers and the editor for the opportunity to refine this work for Challenges.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I want to begin this second review by acknowledging once more both the significance of the topic and the great effort that has gone into the revision. The authors have taken the first round of comments very seriously, so that you have explicitly reflected on the methodological framework of contemplative autoethnography, involved an epistemological statement grounded in Zajonc's contemplative inquiry and described your analytical four-step procedure as well as a clearer articulation of the second author's role. These are important and meaningful improvements, so that the manuscript is now much more clear in its scholarly contribution, and I very much appreciate the intellectual honesty with which the authors have engaged.

Nevertheless that said, unfortunately still substantial methodological and epistemological gaps remain,  particularly in the autoethnographic component, that still means that the paper does not meet the standards necessary for publication. My concerns are focused and interconnected, and I outline them below as precisely as I can.

1. The revision states that the narrative corpus consists of 20 documents spanning 18 years (2007–2025), comprising journals, emails, dated notes, training reflections, and blog posts. This is a step forward in transparency, but raises questions that are more pressing than before: How were these 20 documents selected from what is presumably a larger body of material over 18 years? What was the selection criterion? Without this, readers cannot assess whether the corpus is representative or purposively constructed, both of which are legitimate choices in qualitative research, but choices that must be made explicit and justified. The corpus also remains categorically heterogeneous: personal journals, professional emails, and public blogs have fundamentally different discursive registers, audiences, and modes of self-presentation. How were these differences accounted for in analysis? This matters considerably for the interpretive claims the paper makes.
2. The most significant remaining gap is the missing of the analytical layer of the autoethnography. Following Ellis, Adams, and Bochner, whom the authors now cite, autoethnography is not autobiographical narration, but a research practice that systematically connects personal experience to cultural, social, or political structures through reflexive analysis. The revision describes the analytical steps (multiple readings, line-by-line coding, memo writing, theme consolidation), but the paper itself does not demonstrate this analytical layer. What readers encounter in Section 3 is vivid, situated, personal narration, the Mu koan at night, the Sisters in Baton Rouge, the ordination moment, presented largely without the reflexive analytical voice that distinguishes autoethnography from memoir.

Specifically: the call-out boxes and the narrative vignettes read as excerpts from the data corpus rather than as analytically framed findings. A reader cannot tell whether a given passage is the 'writing I' (the narrating subject within the data) or the 'analytical I' (the researcher interpreting that data). This distinction is foundational to autoethnographic methodology and must be made visible. What cultural or structural conditions shaped these moments? What tensions, contradictions, or resistances were encountered? The transformation from clinical nurse to planetary health advocate, which the paper itself identifies as a potentially rich theme, is described as essentially linear and uncontested, while the lived reality of integrating contemplative practice into a precarious, high-pressure biomedical environment almost certainly involved friction, institutional resistance, and negotiated meaning. That complexity would be analytically valuable; its absence leaves the autoethnographic contribution underdeveloped.

3. The four-step integration process described in Section 2.7 is an important addition and goes some way toward demonstrating that convergence was analytically produced rather than asserted. However, a structural question remains: Step 1 states that initial themes were generated independently from the scoping review and the narrative coding. Yet the primary author is simultaneously the autoethnographer and a key analyst of the scoping review. Given this, it is unclear how thematic independence between the two analytical streams was ensured. If the same researcher generated themes from both datasets, the claim of independent generation requires additional clarification, f.e. through a description of how the analytical process was sequenced, or through a more explicit account of the second author's role in checking for cross-contamination between the two streams. The second author's role as critical friend and methodological auditor is now named, but its scope in this specific respect remains underspecified.
4. The revision has standardized pronouns and moderated some of the more absolutist formulations. However, the underlying issue, that the text does not consistently maintain analytical distance from the narrating 'I' still persists. Passages such as "Over time, Soto Zen teachings on causality reframed environmental toxins, normalized radioactive waste, and policy indifference as remote consequences" read as the first author's own spiritual interpretation, offered directly to the reader as analysis, rather than as a coded excerpt from the data corpus that is then analytically situated. The practical implication is straightforward formulation in Section 3.4 similarly presents a conclusion without showing the analytical path from experience to inference. This does not mean the insights are wrong, they may be genuinely important, but the paper needs to consistently distinguish between what the data (the corpus) shows and what the researcher concludes from it.
5. The paper continues to operate across a very broad thematic terrain: nuclear harm as a planetary health issue, Soto Zen ethics, contemplative medicine, nursing practice, autoethnographic methodology, and scoping review synthesis. The revision has strengthened the justification for combining these, but the combination itself still means that none of the threads receives the analytical depth it deserves. The sections on nuclear harm and nursing, for example, remain the least developed relative to the weight they carry in the paper's stated aims. I recognize that the authors have explained the genesis of the paper's scope, including the invitation to write a personal narrative with haiku and the subsequent addition of the scoping review, and I appreciate this context. But what began as a commissioned essay and evolved into a convergent study may benefit from a clearer editorial decision about which contribution is primary. This does not require removing either strand, but it does require that one of them carry the analytical weight of the piece, with the other serving a clearly defined supporting function.

Specific Technical Note: Several grammatical errors and typographical inconsistencies remain in the manuscript. The authors note that professional editing of figures and tables is pending. These should be finalized before resubmission.

Summary

The paper has made genuine progress and the methodological architecture is now substantially more visible. The remaining issues are nevertheless not peripheral concerns. They go to whether the autoethnographic component functions as research or as illustration. If the latter, the paper should say so explicitly and perhaps reduce its claims for the narrative strand accordingly. If the former, the analytical layer needs to be made visible in the text. I remain genuinely interested in seeing this work reach publication and encourage the authors to make that decision clearly and then execute it with the analytical rigor the topic deserves.

Author Response

We would like to express our sincere gratitude for the detailed and rigorous feedback. We particularly appreciate your precise articulation of the methodological gaps and the Editor’s guidance on tightening the paper’s agenda.

We have treated this revision as a fundamental restructuring. We have moved beyond the "commissioned essay" origins of the piece to produce a formal convergent study that maintains analytical distance, demonstrates a clear reflexive layer, and centers on a single, cohesive contribution to planetary health. I can not express enough my great appreciation of your efforts to provide us with feedback.

We are pleased to confirm that all tables and figures have been professionally edited by Author Services to ensure clarity, consistency, and high-quality presentation.

1. Methodological and Epistemological Standards
   We have addressed the "focused and interconnected" concerns about the autoethnographic component by implementing a formal analytical framework that distinguishes between data and interpretation.

2, 3, & 4. Narrative Corpus Selection and Heterogeneity
To address the questions regarding the 20 documents selected from an 18-year archive:

• Selection Criteria (Section 2.7): We have added a new section detailing our purposive sampling strategy. Documents were selected based on their "thematic density" regarding the intersection of clinical nursing, nuclear/environmental harm, and contemplative practice.
• Categorical Heterogeneity: We now explicitly account for the different "discursive registers" (emails vs. journals). We analyzed these not as uniform testimonies but as genre-specific data points in which the "Analytical I" interprets how the subject’s contemplative formation was expressed across different audiences and pressures.

5 & 6. The Missing Analytical Layer: "Writing I" vs. "Analytical I"
This was a critical gap. In Section 3, we have now:

• Placed all raw narrative vignettes into Call-Out Boxes, clearly identifying them as the "Writing I" (the data corpus).
• Followed every vignette with a "Reflexive Analysis" paragraph written by the "Analytical I" (the researcher). This voice provides the systematic connection to cultural and social structures that distinguishes autoethnography from memoir.

7. Structural Conditions, Friction, and Non-Linearity
   We have moved away from a "linear and uncontested" narrative. The revised Section 3.6 (Negotiating Legitimacy) specifically analyzes the friction and institutional resistance encountered when integrating Zen practice into high-pressure biomedical environments. We explore the contradictions of "contemplative pausing" within systems that demand "clinical efficiency," providing the analytical depth requested.

8 & 9. Thematic Independence and the Second Author’s Role
To clarify how we ensured independence between the scoping review and narrative streams:

• Sequencing (Section 2.8): We have detailed the analytical sequence: the scoping review themes were finalized and "locked" before the autoethnographic coding began.
• Second Author as Auditor: We have specified that the second author served as a methodological auditor, tasked with checking for "cross-contamination" and ensuring that the primary author did not retrofit narrative codes to match the review findings.

10. Analytical Distance and Interpretation
    We have revised the prose to ensure spiritual interpretations are not offered as "conclusions" but as coded data. For example, the discussion of Dōgen’s causality is now framed as a heuristic the subject uses to navigate systemic harm, which the researcher then situates within the broader context of planetary health ethics.
11. Primary Contribution and Editorial Decision
    We have made a clear editorial decision: The primary contribution is the "Interbeing Planetary Health Framework." The scoping review serves as the scholarly landscape, and the autoethnography serves as a situated, high-resolution case study of the framework’s mediating mechanisms in practice.

 

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the corrections. I do have a few further suggestions. The text still feels quite lengthy, making it challenging to fully grasp the intended message. Ideally, the introduction could be condensed to 2-3 pages, and the methods section to a maximum of 2 pages. I encourage the authors to focus on presenting the results of the scientific review and to omit the narrative perspective in this version, as this can occasionally affect the coherence of the analyses. Perhaps the narrative perspective could be explored separately. Regarding topics in nursing and Soto Zen, it might be beneficial to exclude these from the Title, Abstract, Analysis, and Limitations, and instead address them in the Discussion section if relevant to the literature review. Concentrating the analyses and discussion solely on the four identified thematic paths could enhance clarity and coherence.

Author Response

Comment: The text still feels quite lengthy, making it challenging to fully grasp the intended message. Ideally, the introduction could be condensed to 2–3 pages, and the methods section to a maximum of 2 pages

Response:
We have revised and substantially condensed the Introduction to improve clarity and flow. Specifically, we:

• Consolidated the previously bulleted list of conceptual, topical, and professional gaps into a single cohesive paragraph.
• Removed a paragraph
• Reduced repetition in the nuclear framing section.
• Tightened transitions between planetary health, spirituality, and nursing ethics.
• moved the table to the supplemental material
• because the manuscript employs a convergent dual-method design (scoping review + contemplative autoethnography), some methodological detail is necessary to meet qualitative rigor and ensure analytic traceability. It is partially this long because of edits made to satisify another reviewer.

Comment:  I encourage the authors to focus on presenting the results of the scientific review and to omit the narrative perspective in this version, as this can occasionally affect the coherence of the analyses. 

Response: 

We respectfully disagree with omitting the narrative perspective. The autoethnographic strand is not included as anecdotal commentary; it is treated as qualitative data and is methodologically necessary to the manuscript’s central claim about mediating mechanism: how contemplative formation becomes professionally operative as ethical action (including nuclear harm as proximate concern). A scoping review alone can map themes but cannot demonstrate formation processes, boundary conditions, and “how-it-works” mechanisms in lived clinical/professional contexts. The convergent design is specifically intended to strengthen coherence by integrating narrative findings with the broader literature-derived thematic structure.

Comment: Perhaps the narrative perspective could be explored separately

Response: 

We agree in principle that this is a possible publication strategy; however, it would materially change the current manuscript’s contribution. This paper is explicitly integrative: the scoping review establishes the thematic field and gaps, while the autoethnography provides the situated analytic texture needed to specify the mechanism and to show how the thematic pathways operate in practice. Separating them would transform this submission into a conventional scoping review and remove the paper’s distinctive methodological and theoretical contribution.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This third revision represents a genuinely impressive piece of scholarly work. The authors have not only responded to the previous round of feedback but have fundamentally restructured the paper's methodological architecture. The distinction between the 'Writing I' and the 'Analytical I' is now visible and consistently applied in Section 3; the new Section 2.7 on corpus selection is transparent and methodologically coherent; the Negotiating Legitimacy section brings precisely the friction and non-linearity that was missing; and the editorial decision to centre the Interbeing Planetary Health Framework as the paper's primary contribution gives the whole piece a clearer conceptual spine. This revision deserves genuine recognition. The authors have done difficult, careful work across multiple rounds.

The remaining comments below are focused and, in the main, addressable without further structural revision.

1. Presentation of the Scoping Review Tables: Tables 3 spans many pages and as currently formatted, is very difficult to read and assess. The level of detail makes it hard for readers to grasp the overall evidential landscape quickly. A condensed summary table in the main text, retaining only the thematic category, lead author/year, study type, and the single most relevant planetary health finding, would substantially improve readability and allow the discussion to do the interpretive work it already attempts to do. The full extraction data could be moved to a supplementary appendix, where interested readers can consult it without it interrupting the analytical flow. This is not a suggestion to reduce the rigour of the review; it is a suggestion to let the paper's own discussion carry the synthesis rather than reproducing the raw extraction in the body of the text.

2. The paper opens with a strong and well-justified argument for treating nuclear harm as a planetary health issue, and Section 1.1 and Section 5.4 carry this through with genuine analytical weight. However, across the central analytical sections, particularly the autoethnographic vignettes in Sections 3 , nuclear harm is largely absent. The embodied practice, narrative meaning-making, and interconnected ethics themes are illustrated through experiences of ecological crisis, disaster response, and contemplative formation, but the specific dimension of nuclear harm, which is the paper's stated boundary case and one of its most original contributions, does not materially appear in these accounts. The reader arrives at the Discussion having largely lost that thread, only to find it reintroduced at the end of the paper. 

   If the paper's central claim is that contemplative formation mediates engagement with nuclear harm specifically, then at least one of the autoethnographic sections could give more concrete analytical texture to how the author's own practice engaged with nuclear harm as a proximate ethical concern rather than as a distant abstraction. Even a brief acknowledgement of where the author's own corpus was silent on nuclear harm, and what that silence might mean analytically, would strengthen the claim.

3. Conclusion Section: the conclusion section 7 retains formulations that sit uneasily with the careful analytical discipline established in the preceding sections. The statement that the paper's findings suggest 'the experiential realization of non-duality serves as a foundational mediating mechanism' reads as a spiritual claim rather than a research conclusion; as does the closing line that the climate and nuclear crises are 'calls to a deeper awakening.' In the context of a Soto Zen thought this is of course absolutely right, but they step outside the analytical register that the rest of the paper has worked hard to maintain. A conclusion that translates these insights into the paper's own scholarly language, in the sense of something closer to 'the analysis suggests that contemplative formation, by restructuring practitioners' ethical perception of remote harms, may function as a mediating mechanism between spiritual practice and professional planetary health engagement'. This would also bring the ending into alignment with the analytical tone of the body, and would strengthen rather than qualify the paper's scholarly contribution.

Finally, a number of errors remain in the manuscript despite the stated professional editorial review. These should be corrected before final submission.

The methodological architecture is now sound, the analytical voice is present, and the framework contribution is clearly positioned. The four points above are all addressable in a final light revision and none of them require structural change. I am glad to have accompanied this paper through its development. Thank you for your hard work on this important scholarly work!

Author Response

We are deeply grateful for your insightful and supportive feedback throughout this process. Your guidance has been instrumental in helping us refine the manuscript’s methodological architecture and conceptual clarity. We respond to your specific suggestions below. All additions to the paper are highlighted in yellow.

Comment:

Presentation of the Scoping Review Tables: Tables 3 spans many pages and as currently formatted, is very difficult to read and assess. The level of detail makes it hard for readers to grasp the overall evidential landscape quickly. A condensed summary table in the main text, retaining only the thematic category, lead author/year, study type, and the single most relevant planetary health finding, would substantially improve readability and allow the discussion to do the interpretive work it already attempts to do. The full extraction data could be moved to a supplementary appendix, where interested readers can consult it without it interrupting the analytical flow. This is not a suggestion to reduce the rigour of the review; it is a suggestion to let the paper's own discussion carry the synthesis rather than reproducing the raw extraction in the body of the text.

Response:

• Table 3 is now Table 2.
• Condensed the main text table to include only the Thematic Category, Lead Author/Year, Approach/Study Type, and the single most relevant Planetary Health finding.
• Moved the full extraction dataset to a Supplemental Appendix
• Ensured the Discussion carries the synthesis by explicitly linking exemplar studies to each thematic pathway.

Comment:

If the paper’s central claim is that contemplative formation mediates engagement with nuclear harm specifically, then at least one of the autoethnographic sections could give more concrete analytical texture to how the authors own practice engaged with nuclear harm as a proximate ethical concern rather than as a distant abstraction. Even a brief acknowledgement of where the author's own corpus was silent on nuclear harm, and what that silence might mean analytically, would strengthen the claim.

Response:

• Revised Section 3.5 to explicitly acknowledge where the early narrative corpus was silent on nuclear harm and to interpret that silence analytically.
• Added concrete analytical texture showing how contemplative formationespecially Dgens near/remote/imperceptible causalityshifted nuclear harm from distant abstraction to proximate ethical concern.
• Integrated an explicit narrative-analytic bridge that keeps the nuclear thread visible through the central analytical sections rather than reintroducing it only in the Discussion.

Comment:

Conclusion Section: the conclusion section 7 retains formulations that sit uneasily with the careful analytical discipline established in the preceding sections…

Response:

• Revised Section 7 to remove spiritually phrased formulations
• Rewrote the conclusion in scholarly language focused on the paper’s analytic claim: contemplative formation restructures ethical perception of remote harms and may function as a mediating mechanism between spiritual practice and professional planetary health engagement.
• Aligned the tone of the conclusion with the analytical discipline maintained throughout the manuscript.

Comment:

Finally, a number of errors remain in the manuscript despite the stated professional editorial review. These should be corrected before final submission.

Response:

• Completed a final technical edit to correct remaining typographical, grammatical, and formatting errors.
• Checked consistency of headings, spacing, and citation formatting across the manuscript.